One of the numerous listening pleasures for every amateur music critic, one of the most interesting though quite destabilizing parts of such a pleasant job lies in the fact of hearing albums about to be immediately considered as radically unclassifiable. As tracks play one by one and none of them sounds influenced by any other existing band, or like a useless attempt to perform the same tunes as well-known entities, nothing can soil the perfect experience one finds in this incomparable ecstasy. Thus, discovering such an LP is exciting; because, from the first tones, one understands that it is a major exception ready to pollute one’s brains, stimulate neurons and cause an incredible urge to know more. Missiles of October is part of these weird creators who are able to blur marks and perfectly express their proper furry. Their new record, Don’t Panic, is quite undefinable, so much it is more than original and powerful. It is then impossible to admit that there will be something before and after this masterpiece: it is unique, mysterious and deeply addictive, and this is all you need to know about it.

In such a case, it is hard and dispensable to try admitting that the band is playing one particular genre, but, on the contrary, one has to consider how they are apart from any style and able to affirm their captivating and innovative art. This main, undeniable fact can be heard from the first seconds of Don’t panic; far from any useless rock or brainless punk music, the trio takes care of its guitar riffs, carving them in one’s flesh and performing them within a huge and devastative dimension. As they let a constant inner violence caress the shapes of striking and percussive songs (Wannabe, Dead body), they also crush into fragile, hidden skeletons in their respective closets, destroying them thanks to heavy and explosive sounds apart from any relevance. Pleasure goes straight to the heart and mind before knocking us out and provoking a desire to feel one’s brain being pressed into a frenzy but clever and meticulous vice, defining a phenomenal though exhausting form. There is no space for air or a good rest here (Two feet in sludge) as an out-of-control melody stream roller is driven to tear all muscles and skulls to pieces (Cheerleader). The record stands for an exponential rise to chaos; it is a burst of mixed blood and sweat disorienting us, going faster and faster, free but perfectly lead to the infernal depths of infection and contamination of our souls.

The inner wrath contained in the album immediately appears to be the most striking element of all songs from Missiles of October. Wrongly supposed to be structured in harmony, the band’s effort is a false moment of calm before the storm, when the most intense ideas are deconstructed through perfectly performed screams, ready to complete all tracks (Music for hangover, Become an asshole). One thus listens to Don’t panic with an oppressive but brilliant impression that eyes are about to explode, ears to be smashed to bloody bits, and bodies about to rot. The experience here is physical, improving and intense without ever being boring. All is indeed progressively, slowly injected to better penetrate all vital organs and pry into them, or crawl under the skin and invade every cell. One is confronted to a baptism of fire where the only way to feel the amazing energy, keeping one’s veins boiling, is being entirely consumed. Whereas others would only have created messy pieces of music, the composers spread their virus so it disorientates us, though without becoming a nauseous and painful waste of time. The convincing strength of the LP lies in such an undeniable fact: whatever we do, it is inconceivable to try escaping the noisy and calculative tidal wave it truly is. So, let us take a long breath before going back down with an insatiable need to enjoy it.

Don’t panic is a visceral, primitive and devilish, alive and barbarously addictive album one has to hear before the end of times.

For many years and after so many contributions, MyMajorCompany has become an important referential website in the French artistic universe. One is constantly impressed by singers and composers who, thanks to such a fundamental crowdfunding basis, have been able to find their place in the elitist and non-scrupulous corporation that exists here, by getting rid of useless record companies. Thus, for each fan, what is the ultimate pleasure in listening to numerous creators? It surely is the ability to discover people who are not considered as valuable by so-called professionals, and musicians as they truly are. French singer Marion Elgé has decided not to take an easy step, and this is what makes her ideas and originality quite more interesting. Far from only performing songs influenced by others, she testifies for an admirable sincerity and a spontaneous energy, both enlightening her convictions and entire talent. And her first three songs admirably prove it.

Marion Elgé plays with her songs, allowing her artistic desires to evolve in sweet, sugary and admirably well-arranged, detailed and concise pop moods. Far from only exhibiting elaborated tracks and recordings, she focuses on details and simple but incredibly efficient ideas. Sometimes letting a guitar solo happen at the most important moment (Color Me), sometimes comfortably wandering in rock and folk soundscapes (Vas-y), she is like a painter using shiny and pastel colors, as well as dark and sparkling effects on peaceful and rocking harmony. Her sobriety then stands for a non-erasable signature, creating a sensitive and unknown ambience taking us through obsessive, quiet and faraway lands one will endlessly remember, attracting us thanks to heady choruses in immediate need to be heard again. Therefore, the singer’s strength lies in such a growing capacity; more than simply offering easy-listening and useless moments, she asks us to come back to her art and explore all sides of her complex instrumental body. She perfectly mixes a great sense of creation and an attentive care; she builds and adapts her compositions while giving a total, interactive freedom to know who she really is and what we need from her.

Her voice is sweet, subtle and sensitive, but also strong and remarkably full of self-insurance. Under a candy-like shape, she hides a true language of her own, a look upon herself and others. Sometimes changing parts in a loving relationship, sometimes directly aiming to it or insisting on the importance of sharing in a daily life (Je Penche), she keeps on asking and listening to words and evidence before singing and integrating her own fantasies, inner contemplation and humor. As clever as innocent, Marion Elgé constantly desires without weakening, suggests without hiding, offers without ever being forgotten. All three songs are, above any kind of dreamy texture, intimate and pertinent testimonies of the couple in general, of everyday routine and the serious subject of varying simple pleasures in particular. As for her music, words go deep, are modified and endlessly look for the tastier and most exotic red fruits of pop music. As multiple as convinced, she digs, enjoys, understands and works on her impressive gift for perfection and plurality. And such a complete devotion to curiosity lets her be the witness and the perfect example of a real cultural and harmony presence.

Marion Elgé‘s crowdfunding campaign has been a huge succees on MyMajorCompany, and we are now expecting a forecoming EP from her in October 2014. This is another reason to encourage her and give her the possibility to shine as much as she deserves it.

Sometimes people need to lock themselves up, or get imprisoned, in a sound deafness that first is not theirs but, suddenly, wrap them without warning. It is a matter of swallowing dust without any kind of allergic reaction, drinking dirty waters from a brackish river and feeling its sulfuric, rough taste in one’s throat. One lets oneself get taken by the currents without ever knowing where and when it will end, without catching a single branch or tree trunk to float and go back on board. One knows that drowning is soon to happen but no one cares about it at all; there is pleasure in pain, in burning, out of air lungs. French band Saison de Rouille has the keys of poor, devastated cars that can lead every one of us through the desperate plains of their constantly changing musical landscape. Deroutes sans fin is an out-of-control, incomparable testimony of rock songs, starting the engine and spitting sparkles and fury from the muffler.

Deroutes sans fin is a troubling exhibition of mortuary noisy music that cuts one’s mind out, based on cold, running and calculative industrial rhythms. Dissonance leads to hypnosis, to a drawing made of dirty threads on a canvas, portraying a body that is ready to burn (L’oiseau de chrome (Lande I), La vallée de la ferraille). A cold rain falls on debris of black, muddy abandoned lands; as if The Young Gods were going deeper into an unexpected nervous breakdown and suicidal tendencies (Deroutes sans fin (Lande II)). To get to this lonely place, on has to cover neverending kilometers on a grey, sad road where rusty car wrecks and smoky mechanical shells lay quietly. Thus, discrete strings take us into an intriguing blues which seems to be out of a David Lynch movie or Ulan Bator’s discordant experiences (Le carnaval (Lande III), Moteurs epuises). Deroutes sans fin is a non-refined oil that is injected into tired, screaming pieces of metal, or rotting filters of a cold but fascinating art. Bass lines are mesmerizing, sounding like the broken steps of a creature lost in an eternally dark depth; an animal that looks like a man who has lost the ability to speak. Offbeat drums lose us in the disharmony meanders of a trapped labyrinth no one can escape from (Impasse).

Each tune is meticulously deconstructed in order to get its most viscous elements apart and mix them with blood and ashes. Saison de rouille thus takes a frenzy ride before the harmony train derails and disappears into an hellish river, among lost vehicles and mutated bodies (Romances). Vocals are like desperate incantations turning to cries of rage and unease, inflicting their fascinating lack of luck and joy by telling us about murdering walks among the ones who got lost into all the warmest ravines that are hiding in unknown countries. Silence is therefore surrounding us as we contemplate a dry, misty atmosphere of litanies and broken choirs united into a Sabbath for hurting muscles and melted irons (Sortie), an ultimate boom before parking our battered means of locomotion which have suffered during nocturnal, misguided travels. The LP is a phantasmagoria and an astonishingly realistic beyond, an ineluctable loop and an obscure tale about losing one’s humanity, a deviant look upon the origins of suffering, awfulness and tension. One thus wishes to caress the metal spines that spear one’s skin and fingertips, infecting minds to reveal all lacks of the soul.

Deroutes sans fin is a radical but necessary ordeal; it is a painful but remarkable record that helps us rediscovering musical routes no one dares to go down anymore.

Sometimes, it is so hard to write about musicians when there are only two songs and two remixes given to illustrate their purpose. Then, what it the best way to do it in order to demonstrate that listening to them is primordial? As for each article, everything comes from the artists, and only them; without their work, nothing would exist. Such an example perfectly stands for Paris-based band Lago’s EP, Enduro. Thus, with only four songs, they aim to bring an interesting and amazingly well-thought musical body to life, where nothing is pointless in singing and performance. Which means, this collection of songs has to urgently be discovered.

Both original songs reveal true gifts in arranging and orchestrating music. Oscillating between folk, almost bossa tones (Trigger) to stand for a formidable, perpetual soft and harmony evolution, and South-American sounds (Fountain Of Youth), Lago members easily go far away from the frontiers of their own tunes. Decorating their tracks with numerous voices, sensitive strings and an immediately catchy, quiet and essential choir, they dig deep into pop music, invoking it through ageless keyboards. Such a tribute is valued in Trigger (Equateur Remix), an incredible, secret meeting between Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk, where electro sounds take us back in old times. Perfectly complementing the band’s musical speech to which every listener is introduced, it also amplifies and exhibits the marvelous originality of the main tracks, simplifying them to introduce us to their inner complexity. Trigger (Alan Gay Remix) opens us to brand new horizons, taking the base song to actual, ethereal and minimal English tones and going to industrial soundscapes in the end. This is another proof of the band’s quality in choosing artistic support.

In fifteen minutes, Lago show their huge potential, mixing influences in every possible way, building the foundations of a perpetually evolving music. One goes from Charlie Winston to Elbow in a glimpse, exploring unknown lands to find the Fountain of Eternal Youth and drink to be able to eternally penetrate mankind’s origins with immediate and quite subtle melodies. Hiding their pearls and treasures under frank and rough sounds, they invite us to actively and deeply discover their art while intensely focusing on it. Sometimes being a straight travel to the soul and its stronger intelligence, sometimes softly fascinating, Enduro is a straight-to-the-heart, motivating EP where we all have to take the time we need to listen to it again and again and find, through a necessary concentration, the shining truth of it, the secret under mysterious traps that one has to thwart one by one and enter into, enlightening its cave with a petroleum lamp, where primitive pictures are hand-painted on the walls and that time has not erased while protecting them in this subterranean human miracle.

Enduro is a perfect, clever and efficient mix of genres. One is impatiently expecting what is next from Lago.

One has to admit, French pop music is having very bad days. Even worse. For only one reason: it is not what it is supposed to be. Ill-treated by uninteresting TV shows, knocked out by channels always searching for excitement, humiliated by mainstream, brainless media and audience, it is silently dying; it is aimless and without any value, beauty or innocence. It is a shadow, a ghost that needs to exist, one more time, to stand against these atrocious and useless sides of it. Thus, Bel Plaine’s choice is quite hard in such an environment. The question is, at last: how can anyone bring this particular genre back on track, and make it sound essential? The answer is quite simple: with lots of imagination, passion, patience and courage. Present then becomes a magnificent and saving EP one was not expecting anymore.

One simply has to listen to the first tones of Walter Castillo to understand that the EP is as ambitious as cleverly composed and thought. Diving into a synthetic and delicate mood reminding us of Landscape, we are invited to travel through admirable folk and pop tunes, patiently valued by discrete and enlightened arrangements, precious vocals ready to spread out in the second part of the song. This is how we immediately enter Bel Plaine’s comprehensive fantasy world. Creating their tracks like labyrinths where we all get lost as we walk on sweet, sensual grounds, sometimes hearing never obvious but ominous rock sounds (Summer Ends, Chaser/blazer), the band aims for a paradise lost while performing music inspired by Swedish harmony, from Nina Persson to Kent, and injects a personal, palpable emotion, a desire to finally find what we all need to feel, like a soft drug running through our veins. Playing a necessary, breathtaking and striking balad (Flour Drawing), all musicians reveal more and more of their art before reaching a wonderful apotheosis on Please Come Down, which is the kind of track that will surely leave Danger Mouse speechless. Guitars and keyboards melt into one another, go on to unite themselves on constantly evolving drums, and transcend the genre instead of simply refreshing it.

But the most impressive part of Present is an obvious complementarity between opposite vocals, a dialogue ready to be mixed in moving and amazing melodies. The true meaning of the EP is a constant urge to marry such different timbres and go far above them. Sometimes comfortable and full of motivation, sometimes resting and encouraging, both singings never ignore each other, give themselves to one another to tell us stories of painters and lost loves, night races to a future no one can ever understand without living them, remembrances of childhood and strong desires to get news from people we miss. We are going for a journey through different existences, a trip to share while listening to emotional, almost physical tracks. Bel Plaine is offering us a work of art that anyone needs to consider with all five senses, like remnants of days that are the origin of humanity, its bases, its presence in a reality we can all escape from. Then, the band asks for answers to these essential questions: what are our own marks? Which events and reminders have made us who we are? Preciously giving help, they invite us to intensively and deeply think for ourselves, about our inner hidden truths that will lead us to an entire, active rebirth.

Present is an everlasting source of emotions, a hymn to tiny elements that are about to become great things, stones used to build huge monuments. It is a pop butterfly effect, ready to have amazing consequences.

We have been spending the last 16 years champing at the bit, waiting for an album we were not expecting anymore; 16 long years feeling a heavy and tiresome loss. What happened? Why did The Afghan Whigs leave us from one day to another while their underestimated album 1965 was about to make them famous? The band had officially split in the beginning of the 21th century, for no particular reason (except Greg Dulli being interested in new musical projects); they met again for a tour in 2012 and now, they are here, introducing their brand new record, Do To The Beast, which is considerably as powerful as its predecessors, but also, incredibly mature.

Thus, one has to admit that the alchemy between the crew members is still here, as they are back to their original artistic roots. Guitar riffs are sharp and malevolent, sometimes heavy (Parked Outside), sometimes energetic and fast (Royal Cream). Unrestrained and non-measured drums constantly run free (These Sticks). But the thing is, the Cincinnati-based musicians are in adequacy with the new composing era thanks to an assumed multiplicity of explored genres and remarkable skills. Performing funk and bluegrass (Matamoros, Algiers), sumptuous folk rock (Can Rova) and out-of-time noisy tones (The Lottery and its electro beats making guitars sound like a computer-generated loop), they expose an urgent need to explain what has happened to them in the past few years, put their tracks in what they have learned and schematically wrapped up, ingested and sweat through their painful skins. Playing wonderful moments when strings are like bows on one’s veins, ready for sacrifice (It Kills), The Afghan Whigs prove that their comeback is not due to any sort of financial coincidence, the kind of event one is always afraid of in such a situation; they are influenced by their everlasting wish to play together, which can be heard in every part of the album, in every arrangement and melody. They know where they are, where they come from and where they aim to.

The tempo has been slowing down, but Greg Dulli’s vocals perfectly stand for these new harmony chants. Complex and still in a perpetual suffering, they reveal the journey the band has made across the desert and that has helped them join for a rebirth, 15 years after going separate ways (dividing property, of course). Do To The Beast is embedded steel and prevent us from going on, as a terrible thirst remains omnipresent and paralyzing. As for Sisyphus eternally condemned to roll his piece of rock after defying the Olympus Gods, and Thanatos (Death) in particular, The Afghan Whigs keep marching, dragging a burden of forgotten years behind them as they all missed it, ready to get away from disappearance and horrible visions of the past to achieve a moment of life and still exist. This inner desire to fight is gorgeously immersive, possessing all musicians while giving them an energy that is as electrifying as lightning. The beast has come back to life once more and is ready to take revenge on those who thought it was dead. As such, the mesmerizing and neverending final guitar tune on These Sticks reveals one of the band’s main goals: they are conscious of their ability to hypnotize us. It is though obvious that their dark and eloquent rock music is back for good, at last.

The return of The Afghan Whigs is something much more important and essential than one thought it would be. Thus, Do To The Beast is nothing less than a totally addictive LP.

Let us cross boundaries and oceans again to land a thousand miles from here, in countries we would not know about without technology. Currents flow, carrying their waves of surprises and astonishment, unbelievable and mesmerizing discoveries. While, in Europe, pop/rock music is close to the end, polluted by commercial and disincarnate needs, other musicians from all over the world, on the contrary, frenetically get possessed by it to make it exist and evolve in their own language. Guadalajara-based band Vida Boulevard is impregnated by English influences and modernizes them, injecting personal elements to their songs; thus, their latest EP, Colores, is a perfect masterpiece of the genre.

Always searching for strength as well as the deepest musical meaning of their predecessors’ style, Vida Boulevard travels through contemporary landscapes and performs energetic and melodic rock sounds reminding us of Coldplay (Hoy), 80’s hard rock riffs (Al Mismo Lugar) or a much more actual harmony (Dentro De Mi). Slowing the tempo down to get deeper into the purest emotion inspired by all tracks, the band members never forget about power while performing their own artistic language, going their way to reinforce an already clever structure (Morir). Ballads are like real hymns to life itself and gifts for each listener to penetrate a naked and admirable world of simplicity and self-assertiveness (Volver A Vivir, Completo). The crew is succeeding where many others have failed before; they tend to reconcile audacity in composition with the straight and existential roots of endangered tune species that needed new foundations and caring guardians.

Vocal parts are perfectly toned and close to genius. Whenever people understand them or not, one cannot remain insensitive to such a show of force invoked by the singer’s close-to-the-edge, smoke-filled though determined and self-willed tone, ready to stand for the musicians’ speech and take it to the highest spheres of worldwide creation. Vida Boulevard is aiming to immediacy through a continuous firmness, a sweet capacity to enter everyone’s mind thanks to melodies that are being approved unanimously. Laments about lost loves are slowly, tenderly, intensively revealed. Never trying to figure out any kind of overstatement, the Mexican band spreads its comforting and subtle, delicate and wonderfully smart mental soundwaves. Such a fresh air and need to choose the best way to bring us to our senses have not been so much appreciated for, one has to say, quite a long time.

Finally, Colores is the EP that everyone of us has been expecting for many years in mainstream pop/rock music. It is like oxygen in a viciated and intoxicating atmosphere of uninteresting and tasteless famous representatives of a beloved kind of art.

Always and endlessly try to compose something new; such an order seems rebarbative but it is a primordial goal for every artist, in order not to remain inactive while performing only one kind of music, breaking the habit and using experience to go on and discover brand new territories. It is a matter of exploring and risking. German singer Laura Carbone is well-known thanks to her work with electro-punk band DEINE JUGEND (that some of us know after having read articles in a few specialist magazines); though, she has decided to remain far away from such a genre with her first EP, produced with the help of her bandmate Tim Bonassis; she then reveals a totally unexpected talent of writing and composing, in opposition to her common style. And she perfectly and easily succeeds in this way.

There is a lot more than pop music in these admirably orchestrated four songs. One can hear close-to-the-edge rock (Drive By Shooting) or folk mixed with cold wave atmospheres (Stigmatized). Not only expecting inspiration from her artistic past, Laura Carbone constantly pays attention to her new tunes and incorporates a true and fascinating personality to each one of them, even on such a short timescale. As intense as captivating, her EP is made of sweet moods and catchy melodies digging deeper into each listener’s soul and remaining there for a long time. Exes’ delicate electro sounds are putting a smile on one’s face as well as invoking a feeling of mystery that the musician never directly reveals. Even playing an impartial and wild blues-rock piece (Plan Of Attack), she introduces us to a world made of velvet and rough textures, deep and ethereal sounds. Never taking the easy way out, she lets each creation evolve in remarkable currents of accuracy and emotion, having an ironic look at her proper philosophy of life as we know it. From such an evidence comes a troubling fact: hiding under classical appearances, the EP contains harmony secrets which are darker and simultaneously lighter, thus proving a wide range of hearing possibilities.

As for these four tracks, Laura Carbone’s vocals amazingly fit in already sensational instrumentals. Sometimes close to Sharleen Spiteri, sometimes reminding us of Pat Benatar on her fabulous album Get Nervous, she keeps contemplating each individual and all she has gone through while sitting on the razor’s edge. Staring at the scars from her past and all broken love stories she thinks of, smiling, as they yet have haunted her, she keeps going on, progresses, and aims for new goals not to be mocked anymore. Keeping inner moving and exemplary emotions, she reinforces her soul and testifies for her pain through an innocent and incredibly sensual singing, taking us apart to join her cause and see what she has suffered from. She is straight in her way of expressing herself, as we notice all the difficult intimate moments she has lived and that are leading her to a brand new start, to get her existence back and assert herself. Stigmatized is an important artistic and personal mark in the songwriter’s story; she is writing about her experience to expiate, so it cannot torment her anymore, even if it will always be here, somewhere in her mind, but overwhelmed by her immediate decisions to carry on. Thus, a page of her secret diary is turning and lets a virgin one shine, waiting for a colour-changing ink to fill it up and penetrate all fibers of her becoming creative support.

Stigmatized is a magnificent and mature confession from Laura Carbone, a multiple and complex EP that anyone immediatly has to tame to identify oneself to it and watch, with her, what is about to happen next.

In one word, French band Aetherlone’s first album is simply unclassifiable. It is a kind of record that makes us think, while listening to it more and more, that we are unable to tell which song is our favourite, or if the first one is better than the second one, etc.; in brief, it is a collection of captivating tunes but, above all, it can be summed up with the incapacity of admitting that the band is performing one particular genre, or is mainly influenced by any other artist. One lets himself be carried among strange encounters, traveling through apparently well-known territories, but little by little revealing themselves as original ones while they are solemnly and distinctively composed. Then, how, thanks to such an unpredictable novelty and fresh air in actual French music, could they name this first LP otherwise than with their own patronymic? All the essence of this creation can be found here, in such a new-born and extraordinary warmth.

Thus, it is impossible to claim that all 10 tracks are close to any other kind of sound, so much each one of them is a proper definition of hearing art. Of course, one will sometimes think of Radiohead (Carnival), a meeting with The National and Sixteen Horsepower (Mountains Tops/ Avalanches, Sister), or even Swedish band Kent voluptuously dancing with Patti Smith (The Light). But, before that, the trio is trying its own experiments, putting bases made of acoustic guitar and banjo, valuing and arranging all these tones with an unexpected attention and, let make things clear, close to a sort of creative mysticism. 70’s-like organs (The Unemployed Soulhunter) meet simple but melodically sublime electro loops (Not A Dance, Sister) before frenzy strings confuse each listener’s already shaken mind (Here & Now). Such a moving state of trance gets to a higher level when the intimate and martial chords of Hi Dead Folks! suddenly get us close to the end. One question remains though: why is it stopping so fast? Above the lack of something essential missing after this last song, it is a part of ourselves which seems to be lost, and one understands what is really happening: these secret and tense pieces of music are making us dependent, as we feel that we want to shout out loud to get more and have another injection.

This first album is a drug for the soul. It goes into our synapses, spreading molecules and taking us into a quiet but tormented state of peace. This is what these tracks really are: a mix of anxiolytics and endocrine disruptors, provoking a soothing and terribly motivating shiver on one’s spine. Listening to them is about accepting to enter the void, feeling paralyzed by a sweet drowsiness and enjoying a delicate comfort curing both body and spirit. One rarely has heard such a perfect musicotherapy. We are amazed then literally seeing palpable emotional ideas, which side effects are the ones we have first enjoyed. This LP is a test: it is asking us to forget about the past and not imagine the future without it close to us, every day. It is a precious moment in our personal stories; there has been something before, and there will be more after, but all the sound marks we used to know are forever forgotten. Such an evidence is easy to show: nobody can, while listening to Aetherlone for the first time, immediately understand its complexity. But when it is over, believing that one will not go straight for another round and start over to hear such a blessed harmony to get new informations and sensations is nonsense. One perfectly knows that it is too late; this is finally it. This record is a universal cornerstone of music in its most founding and emotionally strongest meaning.

Finally, Aetherlone is inexplicable, because it is extraordinary and precious. If you want to know more, go and listen to it right now.

When a well-known artist decides to start a solo career after being successful with a band, pressure is higher than in any other case. Swedish world-renowned singer Nina Persson, who has been leading The Cardigans to fame for ten years, is aware of this situation. And she has taken her time to create a first album of her own, exploring new artistical foundations. This is what can be heard all along this excellent record, Animal Heart, which introduces a real songwriter we have never met before.

Deeply sounding like Scandinavian pop music (the best and most clever one in the world, actually), Animal Heart is a journey to many different artistic horizons. From 80’s influences (Animal Heart, Food For The Beast) to electro experiments (Dreaming Of Houses), Nina Persson lays her identity on all various and never repetitive shapes of each song. Even allowing herself to compose an immediate potential hit (Clip Your Wings), she takes risks by linking weird but amazingly structured tones together (fabulous Catch Me Crying) and introduces close and personal blues moods ( an admirable piano/ vocal duet on This Is Heavy Metal, or country guitars on The Grand Destruction Game). Thus, instead of giving the audience what it would expect, she aims to new goals while walking on deserted roads leading to sumptuous harmony citadels, therefore proving a huge talent of performing and arranging all tracks.

Though scrupulously and meticulously produced, this record is a work of intimacy and a confession of the past few years. Thanks to her sweet and close to the breaking point, resonant and fragile voice, Nina Persson tells us stories about deception and inner emotions, using metaphors or mental pictures (industry here stands for every human being). Sometimes low, sometimes high and pure, her timbre is always symbiotic with words and music, letting them be as significant as confidential exchanges and conversations. More than only giving, the singer is waiting for an answer from us, a feeling, an opinion on all these subjects. We are regularly called to be the Swedish artist’s representatives and closest friends. Therefore, it is fascinating to see how such a musical genre can give way to mutual confidence; and this album is a successful bet, so that it is obvious to listen to it more and more, in an intensive and continuous way, in order to find one’s own desires and experiences and share them.

Animal Heart has been expected for a long time; but Nina Persson has certainly needed these past few years and a little bit of loneliness to reach such a refreshing and immaculate summit of pop music. Congratulations to her!